


There's No Place Like Home

by Indus



Series: Reaching Rock Bottom- Only One Way to Go [3]
Category: Captain America (2011), Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death Fix, Comic Spoilers, Depression, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Multi, PTSD, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indus/pseuds/Indus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just as Steve is learning to say goodbye, he finds out that he may not have to, and that he may have more in common with a Russian woman born more than thirty years after him than he does with almost anyone else in the entire world.</p><p>The story of how the Avengers come together to bring the Winter Soldier home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Best Friend and the Widow

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't finished. It was supposed to be a complete fic but then it decided to be chaptered. It won't end happily but it won't end sadly, either, in my opinion. Maybe, if it all works out the way it's shaping out to be, it'll end in beginnings.  
> I am changing some things about Black Widow as, well- the backstory kind of gets confusing without that.

By the time Bruce came back, Avengers Tower was home to Natasha, Clint and Phil, in addition to Pepper, Tony and their AI/robot children.  Thor had also made it his base for when he came to Midguard, or at least the base that wasn’t wherever Jane Foster was.

Bruce Banner came home on a very normal summer afternoon for New York City.  People’s tempers were short, and there was the odd siren he could hear in the background as he trudged towards the glass doors.  He’d been there before so he didn’t blink when he was greeted by a bodiless voice.  “Hi Jarvis,” he responded wearily.  “Tony home?”

“No, Dr. Banner, Mr. Stark is unfortunately away from the Tower.  Ms. Potts is here and has been notified about your arrival.”

“Oh… good.”  Bruce had nothing against Pepper, she’d been lovely the last time he’d stayed, but there was something about her that reminded him of Betty, particularly in her way of looking at him and seeing things he didn’t want to show the world.  A useful trick when it came to Tony, he thought.

He knew the way to the floor that Tony had assigned him.  It was a generic apartment until Tony had outfitted it with a panic room and a small lab, a miniature version of the one that he’d all but given the keys to Bruce.

But when he arrived, he stopped at the door, momentarily sure he’d gotten off at the wrong floor, that Jarvis had a glitch in his system.  The apartment had been redecorated in soothing blues, greens and cream.   The wall that separated the panic room from the living room was now some kind of thick, almost translucent metal, and the panic room itself looked very different.

“It’s an elevator,” Pepper explained.  “I took a look at what Tony had done and thought that you should have your space that is just yours.  And the Hulk, the other guy should have space of his own.”

He swallowed, undone by the kindness and generosity his hosts, his friends and teammates, had shown him.  Fighting back sudden tears, he turned to her and smiled shakily.  “Thank you.”  Clearing his throat, he added, “I appreciate the thought-“

Pepper’s mouth twisted.  “Oh God, Bruce.”

He wasn’t sure how it happened, or when she touched him, but it was as if he blinked and then he was sitting on the bed, and she was holding him as he cried.  “I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry,” he sobbed.  “Tired.  I’m just so fucking tired.”

“I know,” she murmured, clutching him close with one hand, letting him wet the shoulder of her suit as her other hand rubbed his back.  “You’re so much like him, you know?  You may break in different ways, but you both keep going, pushing your limits, until you’re so far beyond breaking point you don’t know where you are anymore. So I get it, and you don’t ever, _ever_ , have to apologize for being tired.”

 *

Steve lay flat on the generic couch in the bland living room of the box-like apartment he called home, thanks to a pension account Howard and Peggy had used all their influence to keep alive, and SHIELD’s apparent lack of taste in apartment-searching. He’d been dozing as he watched the last few minutes of something that people called a TV show, but mostly he’d just been wondering how watching people eat insects counted as entertainment.  He’d eaten an insect, once, when they’d spent a few days camping out behind enemy lines and scoping out a Hydra base before attacking.  He still hadn’t been used to his faster metabolism and had run through his rations faster than expected.  His men had offered him their food, but he hadn’t taken it.  He’d been hungry most of his life, all the way until he got into the army and started training.  For a brief period of time, he’d experienced going to sleep without hunger gnawing at his insides, and it had been as comfortable as it had been alien. 

Being full was one of those things that you became used to fast, he thought, because it had been years since he had last experienced eating until he wasn’t hungry and he still missed the feeling.  Then came the serum, and he’d had to go hungry because he couldn’t justify eating enough food to make himself full.  So he had eaten some kind of large insect after burning it to a crisp so it didn’t look so insect-like.  It hadn’t been the best meal he’d had, but he’d felt so sick afterwards he hadn’t needed to eat until the end of the mission, so it had all worked out.

If this was what progress had come to, he wasn’t sure they were headed in the right direction.  It was a familiar thought, one he’d had a few dozen times since waking up.

He tried to calculate how much time had passed since he’d woken up, and then sat up in shock.

“Six months,” he said hollowly, out loud to an empty apartment.  “Oh my God, it’s been six whole months.  Just six months,” he repeated, caught between the feeling that time passed too quickly and agonizingly slowly.  “Six months today.”

Sleep was suddenly impossible, though he’d been on the cusp of it seconds before.  He dressed in his regular khaki pants, though Stark would probably have told him that the sweat pants he’d been wearing before were more appropriate for an evening spent wandering around New York City alleys without any particular destination in mind.  But they hadn’t been when Steve had been young, and he’d adjusted to enough things in six months, damn it.

He started out without a destination, but at some point he ended up in Chinatown and hopped on a bus to Washington D.C.  The girl next to him kept trying to show him obscene pictures on her miniature phone, her _cell_ , but he was able to ignore her easily enough.  She didn’t look like she’d have recognized him even if he hadn’t been wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, but maybe he was being a little judgmental.  Just because she was wearing almost nothing, spoke in a slurred voice and had a dozen tattoos of twelve different men’s names didn’t mean she had no idea who Captain America was.

About an hour into the drive, he noticed that the tattoo on her right shoulder looked suspiciously like his shield.  Apologizing in his head for his unkind thoughts about her, but sparing a second to feel sympathy for the mother of the girl trying to seduce strange men on a bus in the middle of the night, while obviously under the influence of _something_ , he turned and presented his shoulder to her to signify that he wanted to sleep.

He didn’t sleep.  It had been a long time since he’d been able to just fall asleep, unless he was collapsing from the exhaustion of a battle.  But he was able to tune out her huff of frustration and stare blankly out the bus window.  It was a dry day, not as humid as June normally was in New York, or D.C. for that matter, but all he could see was raindrops streaking down the windows.

*

 _“Seriously, Steve,” Bucky groaned.  “You really have_ nothing _better planned for our first weekend in Washington D.C. than a bunch of museum tours?”_

_Steve shrugged.  “It’s the Smithsonian, Bucky! The Freer Gallery of Art, the American Art Museum. And best of all, getting in is within our budget- free!” Bucky couldn’t help laughing at Steve’s wide grin.  It was so rare seeing people smile so widely, so joyously, now that war was on the horizon.  “Come on, Bucky, don’t tell me you’re not the least bit curious to see the Capitol!”_

_Bucky rolled his eyes.  “Steve, it’s the first time we’ve left New York.  No, I don’t want to see the Capitol.  I want to see if D.C. girls are any friendlier to a couple of boys from Brooklyn than New York dames.”_

_It was Steve’s turn to roll his eyes.  “Maybe to you,” he mumbled, slightly resentful, but then more loudly, “Well, hopefully it won’t rain the whole time.”_

_Bucky turned quickly to glance out the window of the train.  In just the few minutes that he had been talking to Steve, it had begun to rain.  He groaned at the sight of large drops, the ones that didn’t last very long but managed to soak completely through every article of clothing one wore.  Then, turning back to his best friend, he warned, “You’d better wear that extra jacket, the one Father Brian gave you.  No getting sick.”_

_Steve smiled.  “Yes, mom.”  It was said fondly, and Bucky smiled back.  Mom was an important word to them, a reminder that there was still someone who cared.  More softly, Steve added, “thanks.”_

_*_

Steve opened his eyes and looked, for a few seconds, at his softly smiling reflection in the bus windows, now streaked with rain.   From dry to humid in minutes, Mother Nature was a fickle lady.  He always seemed to come to D.C. in the rain.

In the end, he and Bucky had been in the District of Columbia for a few hours before Steve had suffered one of the most severe asthmatic attacks he had ever experienced.  Realizing quickly that he was reacting to something flowering in the nation’s capital, he had offered to return home alone.  Bucky had refused to entertain the notion, and had packed him up and taken him to the train station immediately.   He had felt guilty about ruining Bucky’s first trip outside New York for a long time.

Fitting then, that he would return to the city to visit Bucky one last time.

*

The sun was still a few hours from overhead when he arrived at Arlington National cemetery.  Bucky wasn’t resting there, of course.  Steve had made sure of that when he’d been unable to catch his best friend, or even find his body.  But he’d heard that there was a memorial here for his best friend, and that the rest of his Howling Commandos, the ones that had made it home at least, were buried there.  There was a memorial for Captain America too, but he wasn’t so interested in that one.

He stopped on the way at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  He couldn’t skip it; it was as much a memorial for Bucky, for all the Buckys out there, as the one he was there to see.

“Miss, you need to shut that off,” a voice, military oozing from every syllable, snapped.

The girl he was snapping at jumped, her eyes widening as she mumbled something into the phone and then pressed a button.  “Sorry,” she whispered, “sorry.”  She fumbled with the buttons on her phone, reminding Steve that he, too, had to turn the volume down.

Steve frowned at the over-eager soldier.  He understood the policy, and agreed with it.  This was a place of mourning, and that couldn’t be lost for all that it had become a tourist attraction.  But there was always a courteous way of doing things, and well, a way not to make people afraid of their own military.

He wasn’t going to cause a scene, but the soldier’s attitude had spoiled the simple beauty of the place, and the moment.  He paused only long enough to nod at the two men marching in front of the tomb, and say a quick prayer, and then he continued on his way.

He wasn’t sure _where_ the memorial was, so he wandered about, pausing for a few minutes at the Eternal Flame to read the words of two brothers who had died serving their country.  He had not served with President Kennedy, but he had known of the Kennedys, and he had actually met their eldest brother, Joseph, when the Howling Commandos had had to take a ride with the Navy to get to a Hydra stronghold.  He still remembered the other man; it hadn’t been that long for him, for all that sixty-eight or so years had passed.  They sat together for several hours, and had somehow begun talking about families.  Steve had talked about never knowing his father, and losing his mother much too young, and how being alone, except for Bucky, always except for Bucky, had made him yearn for a large family of his own.  Joseph, on the other hand, had known nothing but a large family, and there had been something desperate behind his sardonic observation about the difficulty of standing out in a crowd.  Steve hadn’t been too surprised to hear of the man’s death on a dangerous mission, one he’d volunteered for, just a few months later.  Saddened, of course, but not surprised.

He meandered past a row of graves of strangers, walking for what must have been an hour, because it was starting to become uncomfortably warm when he turned a corner and found himself staring at a statue of Captain America.  He yelped, and then quickly looked away, surprisingly shaken at the reminder that he’d become someone immortalized in stone.  “Moving on,” he said to himself, repeating a phrase he’d heard Tony use a few times. 

He had barely recovered from seeing himself when he came across the name, _James Buchanan Barnes,_ etched in stone.  It was cold and unforgiving, but Steve was relieved at the thought that Bucky had been remembered as being _someone_ , that he would always be known as someone.  He traced the words, trying to find some connection to the man whose body was lost thousands of miles away from its supposed resting place, and remembered.

*

_He was too old for this, boys didn’t cry, and she wasn’t going to come for him no matter how loudly he wept.  He knew all that, but knowledge didn’t stop little Steven Rogers from sitting down next to his bed and bursting into tears as soon as the door shut behind the woman who ran the orphanage._

_“Mama,” he cried, though it had been four days since he had walked into his mother’s bedroom with her medicine and juice, and realized he was the only one there.  “Mama, please take me home.  I don’t want to be here anymore.  Mama, please.”_

_He wasn’t sure how long he wept, but his throat and eyes were hurting by the time he felt too tired to cry.  It was then that he noticed the taller, bigger boy about his own age sitting on the bed closest to his._

_At eleven, Steve should have been ashamed to have been seen crying like a little girl, but he was too drained to care.  He ran his sleeve across his face and looked at the other boy with more apathy than curiosity._

_The boy, on the other hand, tilted his head at Steve and then smiled.  “Hi, I’m Bucky.  Who died?”_

_Steve was too shocked at the direct question to avoid it.  “My mother, and I’m Steve.”_

_Bucky pursed his lips.  “Sorry, that’s tough.  Mine died when I was born; grandma used to say that I was the death of her.  Grandma died last year, along with Dad. They were sick.  Lots of people got sick.  Seems like every day we get a kid whose family got sick.”_

_“My mother was sick,” Steve confirmed._

_“Yes sir, that’s the common story here.”  Bucky’s words shouldn’t have been comforting, but the knowledge that he wasn’t alone made the loneliness a little less sharp.  “That and being poor.  I don’t know if rich people don’t get sick or if their kids get a special orphanage, but we don’t see them here.”_

_Steve looked around at their humble surroundings where water dripped ceaselessly into a bucket in the middle of the room, paint peeled exposing walls that weren’t quite dry, and the beds were covered with a few thin, moth-eaten blankets.  It wasn’t that different from what he’d known at home, but his mother wasn’t there making it better, so it was a thousand times worse.  “I suppose rich families aren’t all that different from poor families,” he responded.  “’Cept maybe warmer.”_

_Bucky laughed, his eyes widening.  Then, with the suddenness of a young boy, he made up his mind that, “We’re going to be best friends, I think.”_

_“We are?” Steve asked doubtfully._

_“We are.  Because I’m the strongest boy here, and I’m going to be the strongest, best man I can when I grow up and join the army just like my father did.  And you’re coming with me!”_

_Steve looked down at his scrawny arms, and thought about how his mother had made him gargle with water that smelled of flowers every day during the winter to relieve the ache in his throat.  He didn’t think the army gave you flowers to gargle with, but what did he know?  “I am?”_

_“Yes, because I have a feeling that you’re the bravest boy I know.”  At Steve’s incredulous look, Bucky continued.  “None of the other boys cry in front of each other, you know? And yes, it’s something only girls are supposed to do, but I have to think it takes a lot of courage to do something no other boy is willing to do, even if, sometimes, it’s the only thing we want to do.”_

_*_

“You were always the smartest one out of all of us, and the best, and the strongest.  Captain America or not, I hope that you died knowing you were always that person to me, and to the other people around you.”  Steve smiled at the stone in front of him, lost in memories of a quick smile, warm brown eyes, and a warm hand on his shoulder.  Then, sobering, “I miss you more than I can ever tell you.  I was always afraid that you’d leave me behind, but you were always two steps ahead, or alongside, or behind me, always within reach.  I’m not sure what to do in a world without you within reach, Bucky.”

There was no answer.  That was the worst of all of it, Steve thought.  He’d felt his mother for the longest time.  Her presence had kept him going until his friends and his adopted brother had replaced the need he had for her to be with him.  He still thought of her, and would always love her and respect the sacrifices she had made to provide him a home despite their straitened circumstances.  But he had healed and made new bonds, and now he had lost those as well.  This time, he couldn’t even feel Bucky or the rest of his friends with him.  He couldn’t even feel Peggy because she was still alive, but dying slowly in a hospital room he wasn’t allowed to visit.

It was the loneliest he’d ever been since those first few minutes in his dormitory, but where Bucky had driven back the loneliness in minutes, it had now been months and he still couldn’t drive away the feeling that he had lost everyone and everything.

He gasped, grief stealing his breath, and it was as if the serum had stopped working and his asthma was back.  Instincts that three years could not erase made him try to take a breath, but he failed. He gasped again, and then a third time in shock when he felt a narrow hand on his back.

“Steve,” Natasha said calmly.  It was obviously not the first time she’d said it, though he hadn’t heard her until now.  “Steve, we need to talk.”

The expression on her face chilled him to the bone.  All of a sudden he could breathe, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

*

“I don’t understand- is he alive or dead?”

Fury threw a glare at Natasha, who bore it with her customary composure.  “He’s probably in cryogenic sleep, unless he’s on a mission.”

“That’s basically the man-made version of what happened to you, Capsicle,” Tony threw in.  His words were mocking, but the look he chanced Steve’s way was gentle and carefully probing.

“When they want him for something, they thaw him out,” Natasha explained.  “That can be anywhere from days to months, and on one occasion, when they wanted him training us, he was unfrozen for years.”

Her words were delivered in the same level tone she always used, but Clint knew her better than anyone else there.  “You love him,” he realized, and then winced at everyone’s reaction.

Fury straightened up.  “Is this true? Shut up Stark. Is this true, Agent Romanov?”

She narrowed her eyes at Clint, taking some satisfaction in how he paled a little.  He would pay during their next sparring session.  But when she turned to the Director, she was the picture of professionalism.  “Yes,” she admitted baldly.  “But if you think that will make the slightest difference in how I…”

“It will make a difference,” Fury opined heavily.  “But I’m sure you’ll manage anyway.  Credit me with not being a complete idiot and ordering you off this, would you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Wait- ‘ _this_?’ What is ‘this?’ Are we going after him?” Steve asked eagerly.  He ignored the strangeness of everything he’d heard; nothing mattered but getting Bucky back.  Then they’d worry about the rest.  “Do we know where he is?”

“We have an idea,” Natasha smiled dangerously.

*  
Later, after a briefing that had included information about assassinations and amputations and metal arms, Steve caught up with Natasha.  “Agent Romanov, Natasha, wait!”

She stopped, closing her eyes in a brief moment of weakness.  Then, because she’d never allowed anything to frighten her for long, she gathered the courage that had her fighting with the Hulk hours after he’d hunted her with the single-mindedness of the monsters from her childhood.  She turned around and did him the courtesy of not pretending that she didn’t know what he wanted.  “He doesn’t remember you,” she said, because she didn’t think he’d really understood when she had said _he doesn’t have a memory of who he was before he was the Winter Soldier_ during the briefing.  “He won’t know who you are.”

Steve smiled, reminding her that Captain America had always been more than a pretty face and recruiting tool.  “Maybe not at first, but it doesn’t matter.”

She disagreed, and he must have read her skepticism because he laughed.  “Natasha, it’s been seventy years and somehow he and I are alive at the same time, and soon to be in the same place.  I can’t believe that fate and life would bring us here without there being a point to it.  He saved me, and now I’m meant to save him and bring him home.  We’ll take what comes from there.”

He reached out and hugged her.  She stiffened, unused to the easy affection he threw around the way he threw that ridiculously decorated shield.  Slowly, hesitatingly, her arms came up and patted his back awkwardly.

He let her go and smiled at her.  “And I, I’m so grateful that you were able to give…”

“Cap!”  She stopped him by flinging up her hand.  “Please stop.”

He nodded, giving in to her obvious discomfort, and hurried away to discuss battle plans with Coulson and Tony, who were both impressed with the way he had caught up with modern technology in a way that made him of real use in such operation planning sessions.  Not that Tony would ever admit it, of course.

But as he walked away, Natasha’s brow furrowed.  She didn’t think it would be that easy.  Whoever the Winter Soldier was, he wasn’t the man Steve had known seventy years ago.  He was probably not even the man Natasha had known ten years ago, but that was fine, because she wasn’t the girl she’d been then either.  Steve, on the other hand, hadn’t changed at all because it had barely been six months for him.

“This is not going to end well,” Bruce echoed her thoughts.

She had known he was there, so she didn’t move when he spoke, but she bit her lip as she considered his words.  “No, it probably won’t.”

He walked with her for a bit, glancing her way every few seconds.  “If you have something to say, Dr. Banner, you should”-

He smiled, cutting off her impatience as quickly as if he’d turned into the Hulk.  There was a simple charm to him that got behind her defenses, and that was dangerous.  Still, he was a smart man, and Natasha knew to listen to smart men, so she let him continue.  “When did you know?”

It took her a few seconds to understand what he was asking, and she took a few more to consider her answer.  Then, not insulting him by asking what he meant, she told him, “I had never seen anything but comics about Bucky Barnes.  I knew his name, but not what he looked like.  I didn’t see a picture until they gave us the briefing, and then there was Loki, and Clint.  And then Coulson and well- I wanted Clint with me to get him back.  No offense, doctor, but there’s no one else I’d rather have at my back for a mission like this, and he wasn’t in the right place to do it until now.  I needed to find him first anyway.”

He nodded, taking in her words.  Then, looking back the way Steve had gone, he asked, “How will it go? The reunion, I mean.”

Natasha looked straight into his eyes and deliberately spoke in an emotionless voice.  “In the eight months I knew him, and Dr. Banner, I knew him _intimately_ , he never showed any sign of remembering his past, or Captain America.”

Bruce winced, then repeated, “This is not going to end well.”

*

Tony would be the first to admit he wasn’t a particularly kind man.  Pepper and Rhodey would probably be the second and third, respectively, followed by every other person he knew.  He was, however, capable of being kind when he thought about it and, for all his faults, he sometimes thought about it with people he loved.

He didn’t love Captain America; he maybe liked Steve Rogers, but that was pretty much it.  Still, he respected Captain America and sometimes, when he least expected it, he could see the basis of a very powerful friendship, almost a defining relationship, in their interactions.

And even if none of that was true, he wouldn’t wish some things on his worst enemy.   He’d spent three months away from the people (both human and machine) he’d loved, the food he gorged on, and the home that was his to trash.  He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to never have the option of going home; he imagined that Steve was still holding on to the dream of going back.  It was what he’d done; it was what had given him the strength to make it through the hard times.

But Steve wasn’t _listening_.  He didn’t hear them warn him that the Winter Soldier wasn’t Bucky anymore.  No matter how many times someone sat him down, he always nodded but didn’t get it.

“I fear for the Captain.”  Thor intoned, his broad forehead marred by a rare frown.  He watched Steve fumble with a tablet as the Avenger tried to read Natasha’s reports without minimizing the window every ten seconds.  “He is young to bear the burdens he bears with the grace he shows; the grace I have not been able to achieve despite ten times his many years.  But I fear this is not going to be as easy for him to walk away from.

Tony shrugged, unwilling to spend too much time worrying about a future that wasn’t something he could solve in his lab.  “Want something to eat? Oh wait, forgot who I was talking to,” he joked, matching Thor’s sudden grin.

They went into the kitchen, where Tony paused in the doorway, struck with a discomfort he couldn’t quite pin down.  Bruce and Pepper were there fixing dinner, moving around in a synchronized pattern that spoke of familiarity he hadn’t known they felt.  As he watched, he saw them share a glance and a quick laugh, and felt a little as if he was looking at love.  And though he wasn’t a part of what he was seeing, he didn’t feel like an outsider.

“Stark, move your ass,” Clint grumbled behind him.

Tony moved, but was too out of balance to quip about Clint and his unerring sense of direction when it came to food.  Coulson followed Clint more slowly, his sharp eyes taking in Tony’s discomfort.  “Stark,” he started, then softened his words.  “Tony, for once, think before you react.”

“I don’t- I,” Tony stammered.

“Exactly.”  Coulson smiled.  “But you know, the world is a whole lot less predictable than we’d imagine, and Pepper is so much more than you can handle on your own.  And on that note, dinner.”

“Dinner,” Tony echoed, not quite ready to go where Coulson, of all people, was leading.

*

But Tony had impulse control issues, and a habit of doing what he wasn’t prepared to do.  That night, as Pepper did what women did in the bathroom before they were ready for bed, and he worked on a couple of projects simultaneously before she made him put it all away, Coulson’s words echoed in his head until he couldn’t keep them in anymore.  “Pepper, are you having sex with Bruce?”

There was a clatter in the bathroom, and Jarvis, who had been conversing with Pepper about some repair issues, immediately shut himself down.  “I beg your pardon?” Pepper asked in the kind of calm voice that usually preceded an expansion of one of the closets that bordered their bedroom.

“Um,” said Tony.

“Did you just ask me if I was fucking Dr. Bruce Banner?  Did you, the former playboy who once said fidelity is for the suburbs, accuse me, the woman who has never given you anything but loyalty, of sleeping with our best friend and your teammate, the man who can’t actually have sex with anyone without turning into a very large, green creature whose fucking penis would probably tear my body apart?”

“Well, when you put it like that…” Tony winced.

Pepper stared him down for a few seconds, then sighed.  “I wouldn’t cheat on you Tony.  The one deal we made was that there’d be no one else, that we’d be honest with each other before we hurt each other.  And I haven’t done anything to hurt you, but I don’t think we’ve been honest with each other either.”

Tony looked away, unable to meet her eyes as his mind went to moments in the lab when he’d looked at his partner and been hit by emotion he’d only felt for two people in his life, the woman who’d given him life and the one who’d shown him that his life could include love.  “I’m not sure that honesty is a good idea.”

Pepper, who had more courage than Tony had ever known, took his chin in her hand and forced his gaze back to hers.  “I have feelings for Bruce.”

Tony swallowed.  “So do I.”

They stared at each other for a few more minutes and then, in same moment, smiled.  It was, Tony thought deliriously, like the sun coming out of the rain, and then immediately wanted to kill himself for the sentiment.  “So what are we going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” Pepper warned.  “He isn’t over Betty and he needs time to figure out what he wants.”  Then, when Tony scowled,  “Tony, we can’t do anything, or he’ll run.”

Tony wanted to argue, but well, Bruce _did_ have a habit of running.

“I’m not going to be able to wait forever,” he warned.

“No, really?” Pepper smiled, affectionate sarcasm in her voice and the tilt of her lips. “You’re not going to have to,” she promised.

 


	2. Look Ma, I finally posted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be careful what you wish for. A not-so-daring rescue, and the emotional consequences of looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betaed a long time ago, but in the mean time there have been several funerals, a major life change, a move, and so much family drama I haven't been able to look at this fic. So sorry for the delay, and thanks again for the fabulous job, [Jasmina](http://http://jasmina22.livejournal.com/%22)

“ I love you.”

“And I loved you, Steve, so very, very much.”

That, Steve thought, said it all.

*

_Love is for children_ , Natasha had once said.  She had spoken those words to a man, a mousy monster of a man who was willing and capable of burning a planet in search of a love he had known all his life and rejected with every breath he took.  He’d managed to burn a good part of her planet, and a great many children on it, before she had stopped him, and she couldn’t help thinking that love for a father, a brother, a son… was not worth _that._

But Natasha had been more than a child when she’d fallen in love with James.  She couldn’t remember ever being in love before that; if she had loved her parents, that love had been torn out of her before her earliest memories.  And she knew she had never loved after.  She owed Clint everything, she needed him, and she trusted him and to a lesser degree Coulson in a way that meant far more to her than love, but she had never loved again.

By the time she’d met James, she had grown out of childhood.  She may have looked like a child but she’d already lost every virginity she could have ever have lain claim to at birth.  She’d known the touch of men and women, and she had killed old women and children younger than her.  She had burned and she had pillaged and her ledger was already running over with blood when she had been chosen for training with the one-armed Winter Soldier who would reach a place in her she had not known existed, and he had ruined her for anyone else she would meet.

James, and what a mouthful that had been to cry in bed for a girl who still had trouble using English articles, had not started out as a lover.  He had never meant to play that role, and in a world where everyone had to have at least three reasons to do anything, it had been refreshing to do something there was every reason not to do.  They had both resisted for a long time, but a late night sparring session when he’d shown her a move, tackled her to the floor, and pressed against her, lean and long, had changed everything.  He’d breathed against her lips, stared in her eyes, and then slowly, almost painfully, rocked his hips.

They had rarely spoken and never slept together during their stolen moments.  There was nothing soft or romantic about their fucking; a stranger, viewing them, might well have thought that there was nothing there but a particularly ugly passion, indulged in because their bodies were young and their coupling was forbidden.

But the imaginary, judgmental viewer would have been wrong about most of what they thought.  In the few minutes they would take together after, and increasingly during, James would spell his love for her in the movement of his fingers over her arm.  She would reply with what were, for her, declarations of _always and forever_ in her eyes and nails, and the way she would kiss the stump he never talked about.

The illusionary viewer would have been right about one thing.  It was ugly.  Whatever they felt did not stop them from killing the sinners or the innocent.  There was no room for beauty in what they felt, and if something in her ached when she had woken one day to be told she no longer needed training and that James had returned to stasis, no trace of it showed in her voice, expression or actions.

Sometimes, when Natasha heard Steve and Tony talk about SHIELD as if it were evil or Fury was the devil, she wondered if either of them knew what evil was.  SHIELD agents could be cold, hard strategists, but they laughed, cried and loved. 

And it said something, she thought, that after five years of being with SHIELD she was finally ready to risk life and limb for her heart.

*

Bruce settled beside Natasha as the red-haired SHIELD agent narrowed her eyes at the target. She didn’t look at him or indicate she was aware of him at all, but he wasn’t surprised when she addressed him coolly.  “Are you sure you should be here, Dr. Banner?”

Bruce rolled his eyes.  “I think I can handle it, Agent Romanoff.  If it’s done anything, this place has made me more immune to loud noises.”

“Yes, but has it made you immune to guns and secret agents?” Natasha asked, a slight smile playing around her mouth.

“Well,” Bruce drawled, “if I ever get immune to those two things, I’d like you to shoot me in a painful but not lethal place so I stop being so immune to them.  But I hope that the two of us are becoming more comfortable with each other.”

“Dr. Banner, are you asking for sex?”

He spluttered, thought about asking her whether she was asking to disconcert him or because it really didn’t matter to her either way, and then decided not to ask.  Drawing on the dignity he liked to believe he still had, difficult as that was when he had a habit of showing up naked or green on national TV, he ignored her and stayed on course.  “Natasha, I’m just here to ask if you’re”-

“Dr. Banner,” she cut him off, “if you’re asking me if I can handle this mission, yes I can.  Believe it or not, I’ve handled harder.”

He looked at her for a second and then dropped his eyes.  Yes, she had.  They both had, because there was worse than taking a mission where the life of someone you loved, the life you would share with them, was at risk.  They both knew how things could always be worse.

She smiled.  “But thank you, Bruce, for asking.”

Bruce smiled back and then went to talk to the person he was more worried about, the boy who did not have Natasha’s barriers.  Who was as strong as she was in many ways, but with far fewer walls between the outside world and his heart.

Steve was not far away and indulging in similar preparation for the mission.  He stood in Tony’s boxing ring, sparring with their landlord in a way that emphasized tactics over brute strength.  Which was a good thing, Bruce mused, as Tony was _not_ wearing his Iron Man gear.

“Hold on,” Tony said when he caught sight of Bruce, and of course Steve stopped immediately.  “Hey Bruce, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” Bruce responded, but then made a lie of his own words when he asked Steve if he could talk.

Tony, with the instincts of someone who was allergic to feelings, made a hasty retreat, but Steve immediately made himself available.  “Are you all right, Dr. Banner?”

“Bruce, please.  And no, except…”

Steve smiled, looking a little touched in a way that validated Bruce’s concern instead of mocking it.  “Dr. Banner, sorry, Bruce, if you’re worried about me on this mission, you don’t need to be.  It’s not the first time I’ve gone behind enemy lines for a friend, not even the first time I’ve gone after Bucky.  Heck, I had to go on a mission to stop Hydra just days after I thought he’d… _died_.”

“Yes, Captain, but _you_ died on that mission,” Bruce pointed out, wincing.

Steve looked down, heartache for his past still evident in the darkening around his eyes, the lines of grief of his face.  Then, firming his shoulders, he met Bruce’s eyes resolutely.  “Not on purpose, Bruce.  Not even a little, I promise.  I would never take men into battle if I didn’t have every intention of fighting with them every step of the way. I’d never abandon them. Never.”

He’d have to be satisfied with that, but Bruce still worried.  He’d been alone and without purpose for too long to let go of what they’d built without a fight.

He rubbed his face as he trudged back towards the lab Tony had given him.  His head was already busy running over the details of the experiment he’d been working on, but his mind went shockingly blank when he saw that his lab was already full of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts.

Pepper wore a bright white suit with a bronze shirt that set off her red hair to perfection. She smiled at Bruce when she saw him, but it was Tony’s nervous expression that caught his attention. Tony was rarely nervous; he embraced the confident, try-it-before-you-think-about-it attitude that was, according to Steve, a Stark attribute, though they all knew better than to say as much to Tony. So when Tony was nervous, everyone else knew to be uneasy too.

“What is it?” he asked warily. Thoughts of General Ross, of the insurance rates on Stark Tower now that they were hosting the Hulk, of Pepper’s incredible generosity and adaptability falling short of _him_ , running through his head.

A slight frown marred Pepper’s perfect forehead, and God he was in over his head if he thought about her in those terms. _She belongs with Tony_ , he reminded himself, and that was enough, because hurting Tony hurt _him_ in ways he wasn’t quite up to exploring yet either. She glanced at Tony and seemed to understand what set Bruce’s radar off, judging by the glare she sent her boyfriend. “Nothing,” she assured, turning back to Bruce. “Tony has some ideas for something that might help you with controlling your… transformations, and I came with him for the walk.”

Bruce felt his skin had shrunk a size too small to cover his body. He wasn’t comfortable talking about his transformation despite Tony’s best attempts at immersion therapy. Pepper seemed to catch his discomfort but misunderstand it, because she immediately offered to leave. “You know, this is your space, and just because it used to have Stark on the building doesn’t mean you can’t limit entrance to yourself. We shouldn’t just walk in…”

“No, no,” he rushed to reassure her. “It’s not that. Sorry, it’s just, you mention my transformations so _easily_.”

Pepper’s lips quirked. “Bruce, I watched Tony build killer robots-“

“The suits are _not_ killer robots!”

“While he had PTSD and displayed all the symptoms that should not go with weapons of mass destruction.” Pepper didn’t miss a beat. “And I’ve lived with him in spite of his tendency to invite mass murders to our home. I think I can handle the Hulk. And I have no problems handling Bruce Banner.” She added a little seductive purr to her last words. Tony wasn’t the only one who had a problem with patience sometimes.

“I… um,” Bruce stammered, his jaw falling a bit.

Pepper took pity on him. “Well, we’ll get out of your way. And anytime you want to start locking the door, talk to me about it, not Tony, or you’ll end up with rocket launching cyborg bouncers. Here, give me your phone.” She took it from him and hit a few keys, smiling and holding it up as she took a picture of herself, before handing it back. “There, I’ve programmed my number in it. If you need anything, even just to talk, you now know where to find me.”

Bruce took it from her and thanked her, before turning to Tony and asking him about his ideas. And if he took the phone out a few times throughout the day to call Pepper’s name up, look at her picture, who the hell cared? He didn’t call her, though he had a feeling it was just a matter of time.

And for once, the inevitable wasn’t a bad thing.

*

Ignorance, especially when you had the best possible reason for it, didn’t mean you were stupid.

Steve had to remind himself of that several times a day. He was trying to catch up, but catching up on seventy years or so of events around the world was not easily done, even if one didn’t have periodic missions to save the world. Besides, some of the things Steve wanted most to learn about were not easily found on the internet; his generation had not documented their lives on social media as their grandchildren did.

And on top of that, it turned out that a lot of journalists told the story they thought their audience wanted to hear it. Okay, that had been true when he’d been in _his_ time too, but now there were a lot more journalists telling a lot more stories about how people reacted to events rather than the events themselves, and finding out what really happened, the truth closest to the real truth, was even more time-consuming.

So yes, he was still ignorant of a lot of things that people took for granted. Most of the time that didn’t really matter on the field, because the first thing he’d done was get up to speed on weapons and fighting styles. He knew his place in this new time, and it was on the battlefield. The problem was that he didn’t think he had a place anywhere else.

He still had his SHIELD-approved apartment, but no one visited him. It was always just him there, so he didn’t spend much time in it. Instead, he stayed at least a couple of nights a week at Stark Tower in the apartment that Tony had made for him. It was basically a nondescript bedroom that he guessed he was supposed to personalize, if he had anything left that was personal, and a gym. And yeah, that was him, right? An empty bedroom and a gym. He didn’t want to spend much time there either, but it was difficult to be in the common areas. Everyone else had someone. Even Bruce, the one person he’d thought would understand loneliness, was building something with Tony and Pepper that Steve didn’t quite understand. He didn’t understand a lot about relationships, but that was nothing new. Whatever made them happy, so long as it didn’t hurt anyone, was fine. It just wasn’t much fun to watch when no one ever seemed to want to be happy with him.

The others still made fun of him, though it wasn’t as mean as it had been at first. Tony still seemed to see Howard when he looked at Steve, which wasn’t completely fair as Steve had made himself stop seeing his old friend when he looked at Howard’s son, but Steve could live with that as long as Tony gave him a chance. But everyone seemed to expect the worst of him when they went out and saw things that were commonplace now but not so much when he was… relevant. They were the ones who judged him, and found him wanting, and never seemed to get how much he was _trying_. It was just so hard to see people walking over indigents in the streets, children talking back to their parents, and malnutrition and obesity going hand in hand, but it wasn’t his country anymore and somehow he’d lost the right to comment on it. Not that it was all bad of course; there was diversity he’d never seen before and for all the people who needed help, there seemed to be almost as many trying to figure out how to give it, and how amazing was that?

But it was nice, he thought, that they were concerned about him. Even though they were way off-base, and a little insulting, in their obvious fear that he didn’t understand how Bucky must have changed in becoming the Winter Soldier. Steve wasn’t an idiot. He got that Bucky had to have had a major personality change to go from being one of the best and most loyal American soldiers, someone with a strong and well-developed sense of honor, to working for the enemy. He got that Bucky must have suffered unimaginably in that personality change, in losing his arm, and in being frozen and woken up to a new world every so often. And in that suffering and change, Bucky may have lost his relationship with Steve.

If that were true, Steve would deal. But what he couldn’t deal with was a reality where Bucky was in trouble, and Steve didn’t do all that he could to rescue him. From when they were kids it had been the two of them against the world, and time could erase everything, but it couldn’t erase that.

He said as much to the therapist SHIELD had given him. He liked therapy, and thought it was a good thing. He’d seen way too many soldiers struggle for someone to talk to about what they’d gone through to sneer at the power of having someone try to help you by listening to you.

The therapist, Dr. Keyworth, smiled at him. “Captain Rogers, you and your friend go back a long way.”

“We do,” Steve confirmed. “By all measurements. Yours, and mine.”

Dr. Keyworth pursed his lips. “You mean chronologically and in terms of your _conscious_ life.”

“That’s a little more of a mouthful, isn’t it? But yes, that’s essentially what I mean.”

“Is that still how you measure time?” Dr. Keyworth asked curiously. “Your time, and everyone else’s?”

Steve shrugged. “Well, yes. But it’s not just my time anymore, is it? Bucky’s been frozen too, hasn’t he?”

“Yes he has, Captain. But not for as long, or as continuously, as you have. His time will probably be all of his own, too. And if you’re trying to allay your friends’ concerns, Captain, it would help if you stopped seeing Sergeant Barnes as someone who will share your experiences.”

Steve looked confused. “But he _is_. Whether he remembers them or not, he did share them.”

“The person who shared them, Captain, may not be…”

“That’s ridiculous. We are _not_ our own memories. If that was true, we would cease to exist the second we contracted Alzheimer’s disease or we died, and we _don’t._ ” Steve leaned forward and pinned Dr. Keyworth to his seat with his blue-eyed gaze. For a moment, Stanley Keyworth was reminded of how Steve inspired countless people to follow him into battle despite his youth. “I know that they, Fury and Stark and all the rest, wanted me to see you before this mission because they think this will break me. They think that I can’t handle seeing the Winter Soldier have Bucky’s face and voice, but nothing else. And yeah, I’ll be first in line to say that if at the end of all of this, he doesn’t remember me, it’s going to hurt. I can’t say how much it’s going to hurt because well… I thought he was dead and it can’t hurt more than that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not happy and excited about the chance to get him back, to save him as he’s saved me a million times over.”

He stood up and walked to the door. The conversation was over. Still, an ingrained politeness and genuine respect made him stop short of leaving when Dr. Keyworth spoke. “There are worse things, Captain, than people being worried about you.”

“Yes there are,” Steve agreed. “There’s living in a reality where there’s no one around you who will call you by your first name.”

*

“We found him!” Steve stopped in his tracks and spun around to stare at Clint’s grinning face. “Cap, our Red Room plant got into the installation we had pinned as a likely location. We found him, and if we wait three or four days, the installation will be barely guarded.”

“’Barely’ guarded?” Steve asked, suspicion warring with impatience. “That sounds like a trap.”

Clint shook his head. “According to the plant, an Agent who has been in for a while and has kept her head down too low to be blown, they have gotten complacent. I don’t know, the world has changed and maybe they’re not quite sure how they’re going to use Winter Soldier anymore. Or maybe it’s just been so long since anyone’s looked for him; he’s never been high priority because no one’s ever thought he’s been running the shots, and he disappears long enough to fall off radars. Whatever the reason, it shouldn’t be too hard to get in and out.”

“The agent’s cover will be blown,” Steve hypothesized. “I’m not getting anyone killed; she comes out.”

“I thought you’d say that,” Clint laughed. It was comforting to work with a leader who didn’t see any assets as disposable. “Yeah, I guess your friend never fell off Fury’s radar so much; he’s willing to blow a cover if we can get the agent out safely and capture the Winter Soldier.” He threw a hand out when Steve’s expression changed. “Hey, Cap, I know you’re calling it a rescue mission and I’m not saying it’s not, but from all you’ve said about him he wouldn’t be working for the Russians, especially not the Red Room gang, unless they’d done a number on his mind. For the safety of the man he used to be, and ours, it’s going to be a capture as well as a rescue. Doesn’t mean he’s not going to be a free man _when_ we do a bit of cognitive recalibration.”

Steve smiled at the last bit. “Well, I hear Agent Romanov is good at cognitive recalibration.” He threw in an appreciative nod at Clint’s assumption that they would get Bucky to normal. Because they _would_. “So let’s go plan a mission.”

The meeting ran long, but at the end of it, they had a solid plan hammered out for how they would get Bucky back. Steve chose to remain on the helicarrier that night as he went over the details for the upcoming mission. He had plenty of days to review the material, and was not at his best after the long, emotional day, but his mind was racing and would not let him sleep.

Finally, he lay down and stared at the metallic-looking ceiling. He wished, not for the first time, that the helicarrier had been built for comfort as well as functionality. Sometimes he felt that the landmine fields and trenches of battlefields had been more homey than 21st century quarters on a ship that a lot of people lived on for months at a time.

His phone, the one that Tony had taken, made some changes to, and then returned looking nothing like the original, beeped. Steve picked the phone up and pressed something he hoped would let him answer the call. “Um, this is Captain Rogers speaking.”

“Hello Steve.”

His heart stopped. It had been a long time, not so long for him but still, six months, and her voice had aged considerably. But her British accent, the crisp tones and warm affection that had been the last thing he’d heard before he’d all but died, those were unmistakable. “Peggy.”

She laughed. “Oh, Steve, no one’s called me that in a long time. Nowadays, it’s mostly Agent, or ma’am, or Great-Aunt, or… well, Grandmum.”

“Grandmum?” He picked up on that immediately, and made himself swallow the jealousy and resentment. He knew it had been seventy years, and he was going to be happy that she’d moved on even if it killed him to know she hadn’t waited for him. “You have grandchildren?”

“Yes, Steve, I do. Five of them, to be exact, and every one of them a greater joy than the one before.”

“Congratulations,” he said, and this time he did mean it. Because the only thing worse than knowing she’d moved on was the possibility that she had waited in vain, that she’d lost out on that joy because of his being frozen for her entire life. “I… are you…?” he stumbled, not knowing where to begin.

She didn’t let him flounder. Instead, she broke in and gently asked him why he hadn’t contacted her.

“I, I didn’t know if I could. I couldn’t even open your file, Peggy,” he admitted. He’d always been brave for someone too shy and insecure to tell her how he felt. They’d wasted too much time. “Why didn’t you contact _me_?”

It was her turn to stutter. “I… I…” Then she laughed. “Oh, I suppose I was afraid. And maybe even a little vain. Maybe I wanted to remain that beautiful young girl you saw last.” Then, sobering up, she admitted, “but mostly, Steve, I was afraid that I’d be too sudden and large a reminder of how much time had passed.”

“How much I’ve lost,” he added. “But now?”

She chose her words carefully. “Steve, when you… I stayed in this business a long time. Howard and I continued to collaborate, and SHIELD has some of its roots in what Howard and I did. And with my work, I gained some favors. One of those was to stay informed about anything to do with Project Rebirth and the Howling Commandoes. Another was to watch over the family members who followed in my footsteps. Both of those were triggered by your latest mission. Steve, I know you’ve found Bucky, and I know my great-niece Sharon helped you do it.”

“The agent in the installation is your great-niece? We’ve been using code names so as to limit the chance of her identity getting out, so I had no idea.”

“Yes, she is, and I know I don’t have the right to ask you for anything, but I’m asking for you to make sure she gets home safe.”

Steve protested the idea that she didn’t have the right to ask him for anything. “Peggy, even if I didn’t owe you as much as I do, you have to know there isn’t much you could ask that I wouldn’t do. And when it comes to protecting your family, you don’t even need to ask.”

“Thank you.” She paused, and then continued gently. “Steve, I know you have a few days before you’re heading out on the mission. I’d like you to spend those days with me. You can come to London and then rendezvous with your team later.”

He squared his shoulders. It was just a phone call, but he was never completely certain video wasn’t involved too, so Steve tried to hide all trepidation from his expression as well as his voice. “I’d love that.”

*

Between telling everyone and making flight arrangements, because _quinjets aren’t commercial airliners Captain Rogers_ , it was early evening of the second day when Steve arrived at a nondescript door in the center of the ground floor of an average little house outside of London.

Swallowing his nervousness, Steve tapped on the door. His heart beat quickly in a way that was uncomfortably reminiscent of the days when Bucky would beat up the neighborhood bullies for betting on Steve’s odds for surviving past childhood. Steve’d always thought his best revenge had been living.

All too soon, he heard footsteps approaching the door. If he’d been at his best, he might have realized the steps were too firm and fast to belong to a woman who’d passed ninety some years before. But he was barely standing and his brain wasn’t quite working, so when the door swung open, he was almost certain that Peggy would be standing in front of him, looking exactly the way he remembered her, maybe even wearing that red dress… But that wasn’t possible.

“Hello, you must be Captain Rogers.” A young woman with dark blue braided hair and an accent Steve couldn’t place stood in front of him, smiling. He smiled back at her, but her expression didn’t change. Steve wasn’t an egomaniac and the attention made him more uncomfortable than anything else, but he’d become used to getting a reaction when people used his name. Something about the way she held herself told him that she’d face Thor in all his Asguardian splendor with the same bland lack of reaction. “Agent Carter has been expecting you.”

“Um… I,” Steve stammered, but the woman didn’t make him get the words out. She spun around and walked into a room. Steve followed her, swallowing around a nasty taste in his mouth. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Steve.”

For a painful second, Steve felt all the almost seventy years he’d spent in the ice. He was an artist and a master strategist, so he could see patterns, and the traces of the young woman he’d loved that were obvious in the face of the elderly woman sitting in front of him. Her smile was the same, but it was as if he was meeting Peggy’s grandmother. It would have been different if he’d grown old, certainly different if he’d grown old with her by his side, but it had been six months and he was twenty-six years old and almost seventy years younger than her. He didn’t feel _any_ passion for her, and it was as if his heart was breaking all over again.

She seemed to read something of his grief in his eyes. Smiling tremulously, she reached out and smoothed his forehead. He didn’t remember crossing the room or kneeling by her chair. “Oh Steve, it’s me.”

And suddenly, she wasn’t Peggy’s grandmother, or even her mother. It was Peggy, and she had beautiful hair and a rich smile, and the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen. It was Peggy.

*

They spent half an hour talking about the past. Well, Peggy had talked about her past, and Steve had described the chaotic experience of living with the Avengers. Peggy had smiled fondly when he talked about Tony. “I remember Howard’s son. Poor Tony Stark, Howard wasn’t a demonstrative or affectionate father. The war made some of us hold on to our loved ones closer than ever, and it made others hold closer to their demons.”

“That seems to be a family trait that Tony is breaking free of,” Steve admitted. “Afghanistan and good friends, Ms. Potts, seem to have done what a wife and child were unable to for Howard.”

“Don’t judge Howard too harshly,” Peggy warned. “Do you remember how hard it was to leave Bucky, and how strongly you need to rescue him now? You don’t know what it was like for us, for all of us, to come home from the war intact and alive, but missing our captain. We all looked for you. And yes, some of us married and created families, but we have carried the guilt of not finding you for a long time. Howard, especially, who thought his inventions could do anything, found it impossible to accept that they couldn’t find you. But he loved his son, don’t doubt that.”

“ _I_ don’t.”

“Poor Tony. It was hard, even for those closest to Howard, to see more than the alcohol and attitude. He never got over the past, and his brain never let him rest or enjoy the present.” Peggy sighed, then changed the subject. “And Agent Coulson? How is it, living with your biggest fan?”

Steve cursed his fair skin, with its propensity for blushing. “Ah, he’s not… I have a lot of respect for him.”

“I’m sure you do,” she smiled.

“No, really,” he rushed to explain. “He’s done a fantastic job and doesn’t let his… _fascination_ with the Howling Commandos interfere with his work. Hey, how do you know him?”

“Oh, as a SHIELD agent he had access to all the records and contacted us. During his vacations, he interviewed all of us and compiled anecdotal records of our experiences in World War II. No one else had done quite as complete a job; some day, I hope that those become public record.”

Peggy’s compliment would mean a lot to Coulson; Steve made a mental note to relay it to him. He couldn’t think of anything to say other than he hoped declassification happened after he died, whenever that was, but that probably wouldn’t go over well.

Silence blanketed the room so Steve searched for words to say. There was so much to say but nothing seemed suitable. Finally, he asked her about her life. “Were you happy?”

“At first, I mourned you,” she answered unflinchingly. “And that was difficult. I remember when I was where you are right now, and I know it’s difficult, and I’m so very sorry. But clichés aside, time _does_ help, darling. I mourned you and all the young men and courageous women who didn’t come home after the war for a long time. Eventually, I started having more happy days than sad days, and I found someone who made me very happy. We had only one child but we had more nieces and nephews and then their children running in and out of our home. I had my work, which became SHIELD, and I didn’t forget you, or Bucky, or any of the other friends and family members I lost, but I learned to think of you without letting sadness rule my life.”

“You married?”

She shook her head. “No, but we were together for forty-eight years. He died in his sleep, an old man.”

“That’s… nice.” Steve doubted he’d get that kind of ending.

“I suppose. And I suppose I’m not too far from a similar fate, and I’m more than fine with that.”

He shook his head. “No, you’re going to live forever.” _You’re going to live long enough for me to catch up with you._

“Oh, Steve.” She caught the words he didn’t say as clearly as if he’d shouted them. “Steve, we are never going to happen.”

He shook his head. “I can’t… I don’t accept that.” He couldn’t give up on hope that easily. He’d spent three years building something with her, and it’d take at least as long to let it go. “The age difference, the ice—none of it matters, Peggy.”

“Of course it matters,” she scoffed.

“No, it doesn’t. I love you,” he explained in a logical, almost dispassionate tone.

“And I loved you, Steve, so very, very much,” she said gently, hoping she was gentle enough. She’d been afraid of just this. Yes, part of the reason she’d not reached out to him until now had been vanity. She wanted that ridiculously handsome boy to remember her as a gorgeous young girl. But more than that, she’d wanted to not have to break his heart.

For a minute, she thought he’d accepted her words, but then he looked up at her, his features resolved. “No. No, this isn’t over.” He got to his feet and made for the door, but then turned around before leaving. “Once I get Bucky back, I’ll return. We’ll have our dance, Peggy Carter.”

She closed her eyes and heard him leave. She’d been wrong. She hadn’t broken his heart, but he’d broken hers. Again.

*

In the end, it was almost too easy, but no one said that out of fear of jinxing the mission.

There hadn’t been any sightings of the Winter Soldier since the end of the Cold War, so he wasn’t a priority for either side. And since no one was looking for him, he wasn’t very well hidden or guarded. The Avengers went into an installation with a SHIELD team, and, with Agent Sharon Carter’s considerable assistance, extracted the only inhabited cryogenic pod in the facility. In the process, they lost no one, and wounded four enemy soldiers, but did not take a single life. Success, by anyone’s standards.

In one single mission, Steve had won the hearts and souls of the entirety of SHIELD, but he didn’t notice. Once they were back on the quinjet, his attention was consumed by the Tony, Bruce and the team working on the pod. “Well?”

“Well give us a little more time, Capsicle! This isn’t like the pod good ol’ Dad built. Say what you want about Howard, he was a fucking genius and even if he cut corners with any of his experiments, which he _didn’t_ , he definitely spared no expense on making sure his Boy Wonder stayed in mint condition in the packaging. The Soviets, not so much.”

“Is he injured?” To come so close, and then to fail. Steve couldn’t accept that, he wouldn’t.

Tony glanced up at him quickly, forcing a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring. “No, but it’s tricky work. Obviously they kept defrosting him and then sticking him back in for a rainy day, so it works, but we need to be back on the helicarrier before we even try to get him out. And I want a real doctor, no offense Bruce, to look at some of these scans.”

“Trust me, none taken,” Bruce answered and then gave some reassurance of his own. “Cap, this is tricky, but his vital signs are good. Not Captain America good, but that we’re not aiming for.” At that point, they all began talking techno-gibberish and Steve was left far behind.

Natasha grabbed his arm. “Let’s let the geniuses work on this, Captain. They know what to do better than we do.”

Clint looked back from the pilot’s seat, where he was unwrapping his hand as the jet steered itself home. “Yeah, and while we’re twiddling our thumbs over here, can I just say? You can lead me into battle anytime, sir. That was one glorious mission there.”

Coulson, who was running cleanup on the ground, chimed in over the radio. “Yes, great job, Captain.” If there was a note of worship in his tone, no one commented on it. They were all still careful with Phil, still too grateful he was there to give him a hard time.

Steve blushed and pushed their comments aside. “We make a great team.” But even if he’d been comfortable with praise, he wouldn’t have been paying attention to them for long.

Natasha and Clint shared a worried glance, but then they too turned to Bucky’s pod.

*

“So, he’s okay?”

“Well, aside from the mechanical arm, which I’m so taking a look at once I’m done here,  he seems to be fine physically.”

“That’s a little premature,” Dr. Jameel argued. “I’m concerned about his brain scans.”

Steve looked appalled. “Do you think he’s been brain-damaged? Tony, that’s not fine!”

“No,” Dr. Jameel smiled. “Not that bad, but concerning. Quite frankly, Captain, his scans match those of others we have found, including Agent Barton there. His brain shows all the markings of one who has been brainwashed.”

“Well, we knew that going in,” Steve pointed out.

Fury snorted. “We knew that his brain had been wiped, Captain. But in case you’re forgetting, Captain Barton didn’t forget us.”

“You think he’s been implanted with a suggestion,” Tony surmised. “I think I saw this in a movie.”

“But we don’t know what this suggestion is, or what could trigger it?” Natasha asked.

Tony snapped his fingers. “Denzel Washington!”

“The Manchurian Candidate!” Thor exclaimed, equally gleeful.

“First,” Pepper said, “we need to stick to animated movies for movie night. And second, what does that mean?”

“It means that we should control what happens when we wake him up,” Natasha answered coolly. “I should be the only one there.”

“And me,” Steve broke in. When they all looked at him doubtfully, he argued that there was no way he could be the suggestion. “Everyone thought I was dead. Besides, if he sees me when he wakes up, maybe it’ll jar something loose. Maybe he’ll think it’s back then. I want him to see people he remembers.” _I didn’t_ , he doesn’t say, but it was there, and no one argued.

So Steve and Natasha were there when Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes opened his eyes and looked at the world around him for the first time in more than fifteen years.

His eyes widened at the sight of Natasha, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, ever the vigilant warrior, he continued his scan of the room. It only took a few more seconds and a slight shift of the neck for him to see Steve, and then all hell broke loose.

*

“What the hell was that?” Tony cried as he brushed the spangly uniform down, looking for injuries.

“I’m fine,” Steve said, but he was obviously shaken. His eyes didn’t leave the observation mirror as he watched Natasha put her arms around Bucky and calm him down. “He didn’t touch me; I got out first.”

“You mean Natasha pushed you out first,” Pepper snapped, feeling her heart calm down for the first time since Sergeant Barnes had sprung out of bed with his amputated arm coming up, almost aiming at the Captain. Natasha had been a blur of movement as she’d grabbed Captain Rogers and pushed him out of the room, slamming the door on his startled face. “What the hell was he trying to do with his arm?”

“I don’t know, but I’m checking it out with the suit on,” Tony said grimly.

They watched Natasha settle Barnes back on his bed, where he sat down and buried his face in his palms. She stared at him for a few minutes and then walked out. “Well, I have some good news and some bad news.”

“Good news first, I don’t get delayed gratification,” Tony demanded.

Natasha shot him a withering glare, but it had no effect. “It’s not a compulsion. It’s more like a voice in his head telling him to kill you. It doesn’t go away, but he doesn’t have to do what it says. So when I said we’re on the same side, he said it wouldn’t be a problem not to kill you.”

“So I can see him? I can go in?”

“Here’s the bad news.”

Steve swallowed. “He doesn’t remember me?”

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More to come about March?

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thanks to my beta Jasmina!


End file.
